Published 5:30 am, Friday, September 10, 2010

After the Astros wasted a chance to end a long and at times infuriating night at the ballpark, Jay Gibbons and the Dodgers turned the lights out themselves.

Gibbons hit a two-run home run into the Astros’ bullpen in the 11th inning as Los Angeles evened the four-game series at a game apiece with a 4-2 win at Minute Maid Park.

The Astros could have just as easily been the ones slapping hands in the center of the diamond, and they wouldn’t have needed a hit to do it.

Michael Bourn established himself as the potential winning run with one out in the 10th with a triple into the oddly shaped nook to the right of the scoreboard in left field. The 360-foot drive was his third hit of the night, but Jeff Keppinger and Hunter Pence struck out, leaving Bourn stranded on third.

Keppinger, who could have gotten the run home with a well-placed ball in play, came into the game having struck out once every 17 plate appearances, making him the toughest to strike out in the major leagues.

“We had the guy up at the right time in Kepp,” manager Brad Mills said. “And it just didn’t happen.”

The Dodgers took advantage of the failure in a late and close situation, which has become a rarity for the surging Astros. Los Angeles did so with an 11th-inning rally against Fernando Abad (0-1), who was the Astros’ eighth of nine pitchers on the night.

Matt Kemp opened the inning with a single to left before Gibbons smashed the 1-1 fastball. Major league debutant Henry Villar got out of the inning with a strikeout, but former Astro Octavio Dotel (3-3) pitched a scoreless 11th to secure the win.

The furious finish on both sides was a change of pace — and a stark one at that — from the first nine innings, which dragged along through long at-bats and managerial gamesmanship.

Happ’s high pitch count

Astros starter J.A. Happ was finished after five productive but excruciating innings as a result of his throwing 102 pitches to the 22 batters he faced — an unsustainable 4.64 pitches per plate appearance. He allowed one run on seven hits, striking out three and lowering his ERA to 2.78.

“I knew it was getting up there,” Happ said of his pitch count. “I think they did a really good job of battling and laying off pitches and fouling balls off.”

Once he left, Mills kept the bullpen door swinging. With the game tied at 1, Wilton Lopez entered and gave up the go-ahead run on a Kemp triple, which was partially a product of Pence’s odd route to the ball, and Gibbons’ pinch single.

Then he, Tim Byrdak and Jeff Fulchino combined for a perfect seventh inning as the managers’ long walks to the pitching mound were the featured attraction. Between the teams, five pitchers pitched to the first six batters of the seventh inning.

For the Astros it worked. For the Dodgers, relieving the highly effective Hiroki Kuroda, it failed as Bourn drove in Brett Wallace after Wallace’s double for Bourn’s second RBI of the night and career-high 36th of the year.

The Astros’ solid bullpen work went on with Matt Lindstrom perfect in the eighth, Brandon Lyon imprecise but resilient in the ninth and the combination of Mark Melancon and Abad perfect in the 10th before their good fortune ran out.

Relievers ‘kept battling’

“The relievers just kept battling all the way through,” Mills said. “They got some big outs for us all the way through. Being the home team allowed us to really go through everybody. And those guys, what a job they did keeping us there and giving us those opportunities.”

In total, 15 pitchers were used, giving the game somewhat of a playoff pace to it despite the pairing of sub-.500 teams. The crowd even played along, as the 31,010 were — until the 10th inning exodus — refreshingly vocal, especially on Carlos Lee’s near-home run in the eighth that just curved foul.

It was one of several almosts for the Astros in a game that they almost won. If only there were a separate column in the standings for those.